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Room child star Jacob Tremblay just graduated – and now everyone’s feeling old

Actor is known to many for his role in 2015’s ‘Room’

Nicole Vassell
Wednesday 19 June 2024 10:07 BST
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Room - Trailer

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Film fans are feeling rather old after learning that one particular child star has just graduated from high school.

The 17-year-old Canadian actor Jacob Tremblay reached the milestone nine years after gaining international recognition when he starred with Brie Larson in the 2015 psychological drama, Room, aged nine.

Playing Jack Newsome, a child born in captivity who sees the outside world for the first time when he and his mother escape their captor, a Canadian Screen Award, a Critics’ Choice Movie Award and became the youngest nominee for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role.

On Tuesday (18 June), Tremblay posted photos from his graduation ceremony in which he wore a traditional cap and gown and walked across the stage with his classmates at Walnut Grove Secondary School in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.

“Congratulations WGSS Class of 2024!” he wrote as a simple caption, commemorating his achievement.

In response, several fans have shared their well wishes and congratulations messages to the young graduate.

However, many comments also express surprise that Tremblay is old enough to have graduated high school, due to remembering him as a young child in his earlier roles.

Jacob Tremblay in 2023
Jacob Tremblay in 2023 (Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

“When did Room come out? He was a baby a couple of years ago wdym [what do you mean]???” one social media user protested, adding: “An Oscar next!”

Similarly, one person on X (formerly Twitter) asked: “When did he become not 12 years old?”

Another commenter shocked at the passage of time added: “Seeing child stars grow up right in front of me will always be weird because weren’t you just five yesterday?”

Some also pointed out Tremblay’s supposed resemblance to Wonka star Timothée Chalamet, while others used the Good Boys actor’s late adolescent milestone to comment on their own ages. One X user replied with a GIF from the 2003 comedy Freaky Friday, showing Jamie Lee Curtis grabbing her face as she looks in the mirror and cries: “I’m like the Crypt Keeper!”

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As well as Room, Tremblay has starred in several projects throughout the 2010s and 2020s, including the 2017 family drama Wonder, in which he played a boy with facial differences who enrols in public school for the first time.

Other prominent roles include voice acting as the title character in Disney/Pixar’s Italian Riviera-based fantasy, Luca, and Flounder the flatfish in the 2023 live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid.

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